The Transcredible Exploits of four Malifaux Newbies

[Shadowfane]

Eh, taking too much support is something that appears to be a recurring problem of mine - mostly because all my Masters are more beaters atm, so I feel I need it in the crew - wait till Zoraida turns up, it'll be heavy hitters all round!

[asrian]

Eh, taking too much support is something that appears to be a recurring problem of mine - mostly because all my Masters are more beaters atm, so I feel I need it in the crew - wait till Zoraida turns up, it'll be heavy hitters all round!

No...this would be too much support (but hilarious):

 

Neverborn Crew - 50 - Scrap

 

Lilith -- 4 Pool

 +Beckon Malifaux [1]

 +Living Blade [2]

 +Wicked Mistress [1]

 

Primordial Magic [2]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

Terror Tot [4]

[Shadowfane]

In hindsight, I probably would have been better off replacing wither the doppelganger or the second beckoner with another illuminated, giving me another hitter, but such is life

[Swiglitz]

Analysis and retrospection is a big part of why I like writing these things up. You get to look back on the game a couple of days after the event and see what you would do differently if could play it again.

 

I find I learn 10 time as much from a game I lose, as opposed to one I win. Whether it's holding my Zombie Chihuahua back so The Judge can't blow it's head off in turn one, or spreading my models out so Viktoria of Blood can't annihilate them all in a single activation. Hindsight is a good thing ... Well from a gaming perspective anyway

[StuffedKiwi]

I love reading about the games you guys play, so thanks for playing and writing -- very helpful to those of learning the game. A quick comment on that last game: though there was probably enough terrain on the board for a good fight, I think the way it was arranged gave all the advantages to Perdita's very shooty crew: four buildings, one in each corner, and only a bit of scatter terrain around the center line and the Squatter's Rights markers -- there's not much there for Jacob and etc. to use as they go about competing for the Strategy. Credit to the Guild player for choosing a crew that suits the terrain, though.

One suggestion from what I've learnt by looking at people's set-ups here on the forums: something I've found useful in setting up boards is to offset or rotate from what I seem to instinctively want (square corners, balance/symmetry/order).  If you rotate your 'crossroads' here 30-45 degrees, and then shift it 6-12 inches in one direction, you'll get a board that will require players to think a bit more actively about how best to use/navigate/avoid the various terrain pieces for the whole of the game, not just the first couple of turns.

[Vaiuri]

I feel a bit bad now as I set up the board. In my defence however, it was set up way before flipping strat and schemes. I guess another strat could have made a very different game.

Plus, Shadow won flip for deployment and allowed me to pick sides... I think he wanted to see where I was going to give him the advantage on Vendetta. The downside being I then picked the side that benefitted me the most.

[Swiglitz]

Terrain is one of those things that is very difficult to do right every time. Sometimes I'll build a board that I think looks cool and I'm convinced will be fun to play across, but then a certain combination of deployment zones and strategy will render it almost unplayable.

 

I completely agree with most of the wisdom on here that you definitely need a certain amount or terrain, set up well, in order to get the most balanced games. Sometimes the stars align and everything goes great, sometimes it doesn't. I don't know if Shadowfane has any thoughts on this, or whether he thinks the terrain played against him.

 

From an outside perspective on this game, I don't think the terrain played a particularly large part in Vaiuri's victory, as Shadowfane was able to move up the board quickly and engage her by the end of turn two without suffering a lot of damage. Due to the strategy requiring both sides to advance on the center line in order to score, the Ortega's weren't able to hang back and just plug away at Lynch and his crew. Of course, had we flipped Reckoning or Reconnoiter, the game could have played out very differently and the terrain may have been much more of a deciding factor.

 

In short, I think we had a fine set up for this particular game but terrain is something we are very conscious of and strive to get better at with each game, so any advice is always good.

[Shadowfane]

Eh, I don't think the terrain played a huge factor, to be fair, although the other issue could be that, with the exception of Vai and her Perdy crew, none of us really have what you'd call a massively shooty crew, so this situation doesn't really come up that much (I'm not counting Sonnia here, as that crew really revolves around her, whereas the Family are all shooting nightmares )

 

Plus, Perdita needed a measure of revenge for when Lilith cut her in half

[Swiglitz]

It was a Bank Holiday here in the UK this weekend so we got the chance to play a couple of games of Malifaux. One of which was, more or less, a demo/intro game for a friend of ours and probably doesn’t merit a write up. However, the first game of the weekend was something quite special.

 

With Suvalas away attending a friend’s nuptials, it fell to Vaiuri, Shadowfane, and myself to entertain ourselves. We decided to try playing a Story Encounter, as these will figure heavily in the coming campaign.

 

Following the rules set out in the M2E rulebook we flipped for special terrain and got a Red Joker. Our first Story Encounter would provide us with not one, but two bits of peculiar scenery. Flipping two more cards gave us, Arcane Monument and Forbidden texts. A definite theme of illicit sorcery was emerging.

 

We had previously decided that Shadowfane and I would be playing so Vaiuri very kindly set up our Arcane Monument to avoid any favouritism. Next we flipped to determine who be attacker and who be defender, resulting in Shadowfane choosing to attack. The remaining few flips gave us standard deployment and Escort as our Encounter Strategy, with my Defender’s strategy as Contain Power.

 

Aside from the asymmetric strategies, the key difference of a Story Encounter is the ability to choose any two scheme’s you like, without being restricted to picking from a pool of five. This open ended freedom led to both Shadowfane and myself spending considerable time just staring at our scheme cards and dithering over what combinations would go well with our respective strategies and which Masters and crews would be a good fit for all three.

 

Being remarkably indecisive, this took longer than it probably should.

 

Looking at the board, I was going to be setting up on a long, raised, walkway with ramps down at either end. Facing me was a large mansion style building, more or less in the centre of the board, flanked on one side by a collection of trees, and a walled graveyard on the other, with a scattering of smaller buildings and crate piles across the board in general. (Photos to follow).

 

My strategy required me to eliminate Shadowfane’s Master and any Henchmen he deployed in order to score 3 VP’s, with a bonus VP if my Master scored at least one of those kills. Immediately a number of scheme’s leapt out at me as gelling quite nicely. I came up with a shortlist of Assassinate, Vendetta, Murder Protégé, Frame for Murder and Make them Suffer. But also wanted to include at least one marker dependant scheme in case killing Shadowfane’s models proved to be more difficult than I anticipated. With these thoughts pinballing around my mind I turned to crew selection.

 

My current pool of masters stand at McMourning (easily my favourite and due a run out), Nicodem (tons of fun but probably not the best Master for killing things personally), Seamus (only one game so far but deadly in a fight, an obvious favourite) and Yan Lo (a Master I’m really enjoying, but one I’ve not quite a handle on yet). After much deliberation I decided to field Yan Lo. I thought his flexibility and ability to resurrect Ancestors would allow me to react to Shadowfane’s plans a lot more smoothly while still allowing enough killy-death models to achieve my objective. Additionally, Yan Lo with a couple of upgrades and some Chi has proven to be something of a beast, so I should be able to score my bonus VP.

 

Due to the nature of my deployment zone I knew I was going to have to split up. If a deployed all of my crew near one down-ramp Shadowfane would be able to send his Escort around the far side of the mansion and towards the opposite ramp, thus denying me LoS to most of his crew. With this mind, I plumped for a crew that could operate as independently as possible. I chose:

 

Yan Lo w/Brutal Khakkhara & Reliquary.

Soul Porter

Toshiro w/Command the Graves & Unnerving Aura

Izamu w/Decaying Aura

Chiaki w/Pull of the Grave

Punk Zombie

Necropunk

7 stones in the cache

 

Shadowfane announced he was taking Lillith, along with Barbaros, Bad Juju, some Waldgeists and some Nephilim. Straight away I knew it was going to be difficult for me to kill all the models I needed to, so, with this in mind I picked Assassinate and Plant Evidence as my schemes.

 

My plan was to deploy Yan Lo, Soul Porter, Izamu and the Necropunk as one group and Toshiro, Chiaki and the Punk Zombie as the second. I would try to pincer Shadowfane between my two groups in, or near the mansion and use the killing power of Izamu, Toshiro and the Punk Zombie to deal with Lillith and Bad Juju, while a buffed Yan Lo would take on Barbaros with support from Chiaki and the others as the game wore on. Meanwhile, the Necropunk would dart forward to drop scheme markers for Plant Evidence, grabbing at least one of the Forbidden Texts along the way.

 

Throughout this entire process the game felt very different. None of my friends nor I are particularly competitive, shying away from tournaments and such, and this type of game seemed to lean heavily towards our preferred style of play. I didn’t, at any point, feel like I was playing a competitive game. In all honesty it felt a little like I was playing against a GM, or engaged in a single player game. This was a feeling that carried on throughout the game, and I very much enjoyed it because of that.

 

With our crews selected, our schemes chosen, and our models deployed we started the first turn. Within the first few moves I could see I was in trouble. Shadowfane had chosen his crew very cleverly. He deployed his two Waldgeists quite far forward, not so close that I could reach them, but close enough that when they started dropping Germinate markers my lines of movement were heavily restricted, forcing my crew into highly unfavourable positions. As the game wore on this became less of an issue as Yan Lo, developed Incorporeal and Shadowfane began to move towards me, but, early on getting Izamu trapped mere inches from my deployment zone was very frustrating.

 

The fighting kicked off with Shadowfane Tangle Shadowing Bad Juju into my Toshiro group, more or less annihilating the Punk Zombie and beginning to wear down the rotted Daimyo. I pushed ahead with my plan, but swiftly fell prey to the speed and agility of the Neverborn crew. Shadowfane deftly split my crew into its composite parts, trapping Yan Lo and Izamu behind Germinate markers and the mansion, while his big hitters took Toshiro and Chiaki apart. By the end of turn two I was facing some real problems.

 

Earlier in the turn I had engaged a Waldgeist with Izamu, partially to remove his Germinate action and partially because if I could kill him before I finished off Bad Juju, it was one less Swampfiend for the Mire Golem to unbury next to. Unfortunately for me, the animate tree proved more tenacious than his erstwhile companion as Toshiro managed to kill Bad Juju first. This left me in the awkward situation of not wanting to actually kill the Waldgeist in order to keep Bad Juju buried and thus dead at the end of the game. With Izamu’s poor defence actually disengaging from the Waldgeist seemed unlikely, the result was my biggest hitter spent the rest of the game not fighting.

 

This was one of my biggest mistakes and I think contributed markedly to my overall performance. Around turn 4, while I was desperately looking for anyway to finish off Lillith I actually bothered to read the tactical actions on the Soul Porter’s card and realised he could have pushed Izamu out of the deadlock earlier had I taken notice of him.

 

I believe I may have uttered a swear word or two.

 

As the game moved past the halfway point, Shadowfane was dominating. He had successfully moved the Escort close to my deployment zone through a mixture of Terror Tot and Barabros interacts and cut me off from any potential counterstrikes through his clever use of terrain and intercepting models.

 

Around about this point Yan Lo hit his stride. With a sizeable Chi condition and a couple of Ascendant upgrades under his belt, he went to town. Resurrecting the fallen Toshiro the two of them took on Barbarbos, Lillith and the Escort, killing the Nephilim and earning me a VP for Yan Lo’s killing blow. Although Toshiro died again, I did manage to scrape a couple of wounds off the Escort and put Lillith in a bad way.

 

At the top of turn 4 I made my second game altering mistake.

 

With a sizeable Chi condition backing him up, I had the opportunity to attach Bone Ascendant and launch a Hunpo Assault against Lillith and the Escort. Ideally, killing Lillith, thus securing me my full VP’s and also putting nothing between Yan Lo and the Escort for a final turn assassination attempt to deny Shadowfane his VP’s.

 

I considered what remained of my hand, the cards I flipped thus far, and bottled it.

 

As fate would have it, the next couple of cards I flipped in that turn were amazing so I probably would have succeeded. Never mind. *silent scream of anguish* Following my rather cowardly display, Shadowfane ran both the Escort and Lillith beyond my clutches leaving me nothing more than a Terror Tot or two upon which to vent my anger.

 

The game ended with Shadowfane’s Escort sitting pretty in my deployment zone accompanied by Lillith and me a handful of wounds away from killing them both. 4 VP’s to the Neverborn. We looked over our scheme’s and got a mixed bag of results. My Necropunk had played an interesting game of Hide and Seek with one of Shadowfane’s Terror Tots, managing to drop two scheme markers for Plant Evidence, but I came up empty with Assassinate. Similarly, Shadowfane grabbed a couple of VP’s for Entourage on Lillith but scored nothing for Bodyguard on Bad Juju. Our final score was 6-3 to Shadowfane.

 

What a game. The whole thing felt like an uphill struggle for me but I loved every minute of it. Despite my two obvious tactical errors, I think I did fairly well, but my opponent outplayed me at every turn. His choice of crew and scheme’s was better, and his decisions about deployment and movement were brilliant the whole way through. I’d have been hard pressed to win this even without my blunders.

 

In retrospect there were a couple of things I could have done better. Clearly the Soul Porter push and Yan Lo’s Hunpo Assault are the most obvious but I think I should have made better choices in my crew as well. Given the cramped and twisty terrain we played over, models with more manoeuvrability would have been the way to go. A couple of Hanged or Shikome could have done wonders. Equally I think Seamus or McMourning may have been a better choice of Master but I wanted to get more table time with Yan Lo before we start the campaign.

 

All in all it was a brilliant experience and I fully intend on playing more Story Encounters from now one. They may not be perfectly balanced like the Standard Encounters are, but, Hell’s Teeth, they’re a lot more fun.

 

Cheers,

 

[Swiglitz]

Photo's as promised.

 

It should be noted that while we await the lovely new plastic goodness some models have been proxied ... I'm looking at you Huggy/Bad Juju

 

The board set-up:

 

 

Deployment:

 

 

Turn 1

 

 

Turn 2

 

http://themostexcellentandawesomeforumever-wyrd.com/community/gallery/image/2555-turn-2-3/

http://themostexcellentandawesomeforumever-wyrd.com/community/gallery/image/2556-turn-2-2/

 

It appears there was some sort of cock-up with the camera and/or Dropbox as the rest of the game photo's are missing

If they show up at a later date I'll upload them here, but you get the gist of what's going on.

 

Cheers,

[Vaiuri]

That's weird, they were all there this morning!

[Swiglitz]

Aye. 14 photo's uploaded and I've got them all, but we've no shots of turn 3 onwards

[Shadowfane]

So, another week, another battle report, and this time the vast entertainment of a Story Encounter.

 

When the Escort encounter was flipped, I looked at the Attacker/Defender roles, realised that the chances of me killing any and all of the various Resser Masters/Henchmen Swig has available were slim to none (I have a terrible record at killing them!) and promptly picked the attacker role.

I then spent some time thinking about my available Masters and whether they were any good:

 

Lynch: neither fast enough nor, in my opinion survivable enough for this encounter.

 

Pandora: fast enough, when you take Fading Memory into account, and probably survivable enough as well, but works better in a group, whilst I thought it was more likely I'd need a more independant crew.  Therefore we turned to:

 

Lilith: Fast, fairly survivable, and with the added advantage that anyone that tried to kill her in melee and failed wasn't going to be around very long afterwards!

 

With that in mind, I picked a crew based around her and some tough henchmen, with other minions picked for specific purporses:

 

Lilith - Beckon Malifaux, Lilving Blade, Wicked Mistress

Primordial Magic (because a free pointless activation and essentially a free soulstone for card drawing every turn is great!)

Barbaros - Nephilim Gladiatus (high stats, lots of pushes and a nasty defensive trigger make him hard to get rid of)

Bad Juju - Eternal Friend, Hexed among you (also hard to get rid of, plus advance deploying swampfiends and burying/reburying)

2 Waldgeists (roadblocks and returning points for Juju)

2 Terror Tots (cheap interact activations for moving the Escort)

 

 

I picked Bodyguard on Juju and Entourage on Lilth for my schemes, since Juju could come back, and Lilith is ludicrously fast when she needs to be.

 

Right from the start, the plan was to isolate and destroy one half of Yan Lo's crew and move the Escort up that way, whilst avoiding/holding up the other half.  To this end, the majority of the crew deployed centrally and were thus able to move quickly in whichever direction I wanted to go.  The Waldgeists were deployed forwards using Hexed Among You in order to either hold up crew movement with Germinate markers, or to act as Tangle Shadows waypoints for Lilith in order to throw slower models (is, Juju) up the field.  This worked quite well, as by the end of turn 1, Juju had killed a Punk Zombie and was busy with Chiaki and Toshiro.

 

Swigs given a pretty good description of what happened above, I just want to re-emphasize the ridiculousness of the situation between Izamu and the Waldgiest: I WANTED the Waldgeist dead so Juju could come back, whereas he wanted to keep the Waldgeist alive so Juju would count as dead at the end of the game, and this the animated tree kept punching the animated suit of armour in a vain attempt to get him to DO something, whilst the armour just sat there and healed up every so often because he couldn''t actuallly get away.....

 

Whilst Swig is kind to say I outplayed him, I don't actually agree - I think him not reading his totem properly went a long way to him losing the game, as once he started using that push, Yan Lo caught up with Lilith rather quickly

 

From my point of view, this was the first time I've used the Swampfiends, as well as the Primordial Magic, and I have to say they're mean.  Throwing forests everywhere really hampered Swig to start with, although as he said, later on it became less of an issue, and they were surprisingly hard to get rid of.  The Magic provided a free activation that gave no hint of my plans early in the turn, forcing Swig to activate something else before I responded, and stacking Rush of Magic twice is *mean*

 

Anyway, I think I've nicely gotten my head around Lilith now, and I'm getting a little bored of the fact that all my Masters are essentially different variety of beatstick (each with their own flavour, of course), so I'm looking forward to my GenCon order arriving, which contains both Zoraida and the Dreamer..... that'll be fun...

[cdhay]

Great write up again guys! Was speaking to the guy in element games on Sunday just gone and he mentioned he was getting a demo from Vicky (the girl who did the metal dawn serpent thing!) so I thought it was one of you! Hope the demo went well and might start playing some story encounters as they seem a lot of fun.

 

Reminder that escalation league starts on Wed at element if any of you fancy playing some new people. 35ss to start. Last time I will badger you about coming down so will leave you in peace from now on.....

[Swiglitz]

 

Yeah, that was us. Due to the Bank Holiday weekend we found we actually had enough time to play a second game.

 

It's not that we don't want to play new people, although I am a curmudgeonly misanthrope at the best of times. It's a lack of time with most of us, we generally only get to meet up once a week as gainful employment is a harsh mistress. That and I'm in Birmingham Monday to Friday and although I do love me some gaming the round trip to Stockport just play a game is a little too much, even for me.

 

[Shadowfane]

Also, for me, at least, it's too expensive to really get there on anything involving regular basis - I live the other side of Manchester, so the petrol cost of travelling to NWGC is not insignificant, plus the £4 fee for game, plus drinks and whatnot, basically makes it non-viable as a weekly visit - I'd go every so often, but the chances of me getting there every week are basically slim to zero, sadly.

 

Although, having said that, I might try and do the escalation league - if I only have to get there every other week, that might be doable - can't do it this week though

[Swiglitz]

Ahoy!

 

Real lives being what they are, we've been away for a couple of weeks but the good news is: We're Back Baby!

 

I don't really have an update for you as we haven't played at all during our absence but rest assured our Transcredible Exploits should be receiving weekly updates again from this weekend. Hopefully, we should have some campaign diaries, battle reports and in-character gibberish for you to all enjoy in the coming weeks as we are due to kick to off our narrative campaign; 'Conspiracies' next week.

 

It's good to be back and I look forward to once more detailing our triumphs and tragedies for your perusal.

 

See you soon

[deValmont]

  Hey guys, I was thinking about this the other day - would any of you be interested in maybe joining a few of us EleMentals on a weekend for a game or two? We're all reasonable mobile so we could meet at somewhere more accessible for you, perhaps at Fan Boy 3?

[Vaiuri]

I'd be open to the idea - but I am slow and in no way good ^^ Be warned!

[deValmont]

  I think that fact that you are a painting prodigy makes up for any shortcomings in your gameplay. I'm still reeling from those Witchlings.

[Swiglitz]

This weekend brought us our first game of Malifaux in what seemed like ages (although it’s only actually been two weeks), and a doozy it was too. Well, Shadowfane may have a differing opinion but I’ll get to that a bit later.

 

With Suvalas otherwise engaged (such a busy social life that boy) it once again fell to Vaiuri, Shadowfane and myself to provide the week’s gaming entertainment. Vaiuri had been busy earlier in the day picking up copies of Crossroads and the wave 2 arsenal decks and really wanted to get her teeth into those so Shadowfane and I played.

 

As it had been while since any of us had played we elected to play a standard encounter to ease ourselves back into the flow of the game. Additionally, Shadowfane’s Gen Con order had recently arrived and he was desperate to play with the Zoriada, so taking things slow was definitely on the cards.

 

Vaiuri set up the table for us with a moderately sized three story building off centre of the  table, a graveyard in one corner, a smaller version of the raised walkway and ramps along the opposite table edge, and a handful of trees scattered about. (In our haste to begin playing again, I must confess we forgot to take any photos, mea culpa.)

 

We flipped flanking deployment and Squatters Rights for the strat. Our scheme pool turned up LitS, Distract, Breakthrough, Protect Territory, and Plant Evidence giving us a very ‘marker-heavy’ selection to choose from. Knowing Shadowfane was going to be fielding Zoriada but little else, my mind started buzzing about a good fit for the combination of strat, schemes, and deployment.

 

After my last few games (and humiliating defeats), I resolved to play to my strengths and after a brief moment of consideration plumped for Dr. Douglas McMourning as my master.

 

McMourning is my favourite of all the resser masters. In the fluff he comes across as a deranged genius who is equal parts comedic, pantomime villain, and disturbing psychopath. In the game, he acts a little like Herbert West from the H.P. Lovecraft novella ‘Reanimator’. In other words, a perfect match for me.

 

I have some considerable experience with the good doctor and felt that this would be a good way to reacquaint myself with the game, and a comfortable fit when facing a new and potentially unknown opposing master. With the master decided, I set about writing up my crew.

 

As some of you may have noticed, I tend to choose models for a crew based more on theme and fluff than on performance or optimal cost to use ratios. This crew was to be no different. I knew I wanted to load up as much poison in the crew as I could and that I wanted everything to feel like the whole crew had just stepped out of the morgue, or McMourning’s hidden lab. Consequently I chose:

 

McMourning w/Decaying Aura, Moonlighting, & Plastic Surgery.

Zombie Chihuahua.

Sebastian w/ Those are not Ours & Transfusion.

Rafkin w/ Transfusion.

Flesh Construct

Nurse

Rotten Belle

2 x Canine Remains.

 

Although Rafkin is actually Nicodem’s assistant/protégé I felt his poison based mechanics were too good a fit for McMourning to not include him. I broke my theme a little by taking a Rotten Belle, but I decided she was once a Nurse that had unfortunately taken one too many blows to the head for a skin graft or twelve to fix, so McMourning reanimated her to better suit her new look.

 

My crew decided, I chose Distract and Breakthrough for my schemes. My plan was to break the crew into two groups. The first group consisting of the Canine Remains and Rafkin would push ahead into Shadowfane’s deployment zone, dropping scheme markers along the way, to score me Breakthrough. I figured the speed of the Canine Remains, coupled with Rafkin’s destructive capabilities and potential heal would see them through to 3VP’s. Meanwhile the rest of my crew would loiter on the centre line grabbing Squat Markers, handing out distract, and plastering Shadowfane’s big hitters with poison. If the opportunity for an Expunge or two presented itself, so much the better.

 

With the plan set firmly in my mind, I deployed the crew. My breakthrough group deployed as far up the table as the zone would allow, while my distract group set up nearer the middle, ready to advance.

 

On seeing Shadowfane’s crew deploy I had immediate reservations about my plan’s success.

 

Across the board, far closer than I would have liked, Bad Juju and a Teddy stared down at my Breakthrough group, while a collection of Waldgeists, Silurids and Zoraida herself faced off against my distract group. Previously, Shadowfane had announced he was taking Plant Evidence and Breakthrough as his schemes so I knew I had to pay particular attention to the Silurids, the slippery buggers.

 

Early in the first turn, Shadowfane pushed Teddy deep into my crew with a ‘Gobble you up …’ on one of my Canine Remains, the resulting attacks obliterated the poor mutt and placed a Terrifying and supremely tough monster right in amongst my models. Not the start I was hoping for.

 

Knowing that Bad Juju would soon be following suit I resolved to get my attacks in first.

 

My Rotten Belle lured the Mire Golem over towards the main group, thus styming his charge line at the weaker canine remains and putting him out of range of the juicier Distract group. Shadowfane, used to my Lure tactics, sighed and shuffled the dripping monster back towards the decaying dog, precisely what I wanted him to do. Rafkin stepped up and hurled a bottle of formaldehyde at Bad Juju, doing negligible damage, but putting an all important poison token on him. Using his Scent of Death ability he promptly charged and unleashed a storm of Liston Knife and Unnecessary Surgery attacks. When the frenzied slashing subsided, the unhinged Embalmer stood, dripping in filth, but alone.

 

In one activation Rafkin had butchered Bad Juju.

 

As I am usually on the receiving end of actions like that, I was a little bemused. To his credit, Shadowfane simply laughed and said, “He’s a bit good isn’t he?”

 

This was, unfortunately for Shadowfane, a taste of the rest of the game to come. Over the next two or three turns, McMourning and friends (an excellent theme for a Saturday morning cartoon if any animators are reading this) took Zoraida’s crew apart.

 

The good Doctor, following Rafkin’s example, tore apart the Teddy in his first couple of activations and gained me a new Flesh Construct into the bargain. Meanwhile a combination of my Nurse and Rotten Belle managed to shut down the Silurid’s scheme shenanigans. As I pushed forward into the centre of the table, Shadowfane began to struggle to keep up with terrible toll the poison condition was wreaking on his models.

 

One by one, the Waldgeists fell, leaving poor Zoraida exposed. Unable to contain my glee I cheerfully loaded the poor biddy up with lethal toxins and watched, enraptured, as she transformed into an undead dog.

 

At the top of turn four we called the game. Shadowfane had been unable to recover from the loss of his two big hitters so early in the game and as we drew our control hands for the closing stages, he conceded, having only two Silurids left on the table, one of whom was paralysed.

 

I’ve said before I tend to learn a lot more about my games when I lose, consequently I don’t have a great many insights about this one. Although I can say, Decaying Aura on McMourning is brutal, as is having two models with Transfusion. I deliberately stayed away from the ‘Poison Bomb’ tactic, as I don’t think it’s a lot fun, and I would certainly be disheartened if my opponent did it to me. However, even without that particular trick, the combination of Doug, Sebastian and Rafkin was very dangerous. I was able to burn Shadowfane’s model count down very quickly, so quickly in fact, I never once scored Distract as the models I was distracting kept dying from poison, much to Shadowfane’s amusement. I also felt a lot more in control of the table, with my Nurse and Rotten Belle able to shut down Shadowfane’s scheme runners, and provide suitable support where needed. I shall be taking that particular combination again I think.

 

Overall it was a fun game (from my point of view at least) and a nice way to re-start my love affair with Malifaux. Hopefully, Shadowfane can provide a counterpoint to my rather one-sided account of events.

 

It’s unlikely we’ll have much of an update next week as neither Vaiuri nor myself will be available to game, but fingers crossed, Suvalas and Shadowfane will be able to provide us with something.

 

Cheers,

[asrian]

Nice write up.

Fun Zoraida tip vs McMourning poison crews...hire a Mercenary Performer (6SS), and she can destroy scheme markers, be obeyed to attack/lure, has a built in Poison detonation (like McMourning), and can turn his strengths against himself (Always fun to Voodoo doll an enemy, use Hex Bag to put 4 poison on the doll, obey the Performer to lure + explode poison (or paralyze if it comes into base to base with her) either the Doll or the Hemmed enemy. Then activate Performer next chance and do it all again. 

Also, McMourning can use the performer for the exact same reasons, which makes it very good for him as well. (I'm not an Arcanist player, but Performer is one of my top pick Mercenaries for a few reasons).

[Shadowfane]

Ah, McMourning, the bane of my existence..... the only one of Swig's Masters I really don't have a good answer to at the moment.  Granted, I wasn't helping myself this game by distinctly limiting my model pool!

 

Since the GenCon order had arrived, and I don't particularly like model repping, it was inevitable that out of the two masters I bought and ordered (Dreamer and Zoraida) it would be the old biddy making an appearance, along with a (mostly) themed crew.

Zoraida, with Crystal Ball and Hexbag, plus Bad Juju, 2 Silurids and 2 Waldgeists comes to 37ss, so at somewhat of a loss as to what else to take, I added a Teddy and called it done.

 

Swig has provided a fairly good account of the game, so I'll just add that my biggest (probably) failure of the game was to watch Bad Juju die horribly, then about a turn later put some damage on McMourning, watch Swig use a soulstone to prevent damage, then say "Oh yes, you can do that!  I'd forgotten..."....

[dancater]

Excellent, as usual. Your little crew of mad men and lady is an entertaining inspiration.

Thanks folks.

[Swiglitz]

I have decided I’m going to stop making wild and unsubstantiated claims about forthcoming games as every time I do, real life gets in the way and I end up writing about something completely different. With that in mind, I give you the latest Transcredible Exploit of four Malifaux Minions.

 

After another brief hiatus, our group met up on Friday past to indulge in some Malifaux goodness. Except, due to circumstances beyond our control (work), Shadowfane was unable to join us . Additionally, Vaiuri had been feeling a bit under the weather so Suvavlas and I faced off across the mean streets of the City.

 

We elected to play a story encounter as they’re sooo much fun (if you haven’t played any, you should) and flipped ourselves quite a unique combination.

 

The encounter strategy was Power Ritual with the defender getting Steal Supplies (I confess that’s probably not what it’s called, but I wasn’t paying attention.) This would mean the attacker would be attempting to drop scheme markers near the Arcane Monument in the centre of the table every turn, while the defender was trying to pickpocket the opposing Master or Henchmen.

 

So far, so good.

 

The first fly in the ointment came in the form of Mysterious Effigies. Two of these peculiar mannequins would be set up on the table and the player in control of them at the end of the game would earn additional VP’s, one per Effigy controlled. Immediately a source of up to 2 additional VP’s had entered play, this alone set my mind whizzing. The final curveball heading our way was the Red Joker flip for deployment – Blind Deployment.

 

Hmmm … Blind Deployment you say? Well, there goes any semblance of a plan I might have had.

 

Before selecting our crews we flipped for attacker and defender, resulting in Suvavlas getting to attack, and me defending. With that accomplished, we set about the task of designing crews.

 

In order to win the game, I would have to field a crew that was capable of keeping Suvavlas’ models away from the Arcane Monument, while simultaneously pursuing his master and/or henchmen, keep one eye on the Mysterious Effigies and accomplish whatever scheme’s I decided on taking.

 

A tall order.

 

On further examination of my strategy I discovered that minions and peons could not actually perform the pickpocket action and thus score my VP’s meaning I was going to have to field at least a couple of henchmen and/or enforcers if I wanted to have any hope of winning. I admit I was thoroughly stumped. Not knowing where either crew would be deploying was a real problem so I knew I would have to take as mobile a crew as possible, I would also have to take at least a couple of tanky models to hold up Suvalas’ attempts to reach the Monument. My first thoughts were to take Nicodem and summon in the models I needed as the game progressed and I had, in fact, gotten about half way through designing a crew for just such a purpose when I was struck by the thought that this was a bad idea.

 

In my experience, Nicodem is a master quite reliant on his resources. He needs good cards for summons, he needs stones to add in suits if you don’t draw many crows and he needs corpse markers to target his summons on. Normally this isn’t a problem as I’m able to take support models that help out and by positioning them fairly close together form a power base from which I conduct my summoning. The deployment meant this would be very difficult to achieve. I quickly scratched the idea and hit upon another.

 

I would need models capable of handling themselves in isolation and I would need as many henchmen/enforcers as I good afford so hopefully one or more would be near Suvalas’ master and henchmen to let me start scoring.

 

Enter Yan Lo.

 

I’ve had a mixed bag of results from this inscrutable sorcerer, but I’ve always had fun playing him and his crew theme plays directly to the ‘dirty dozen’ style I thought I would need to field. With this in mind I choose:

 

Yan Lo w/Brutal Khakkhara, Fortify the Spirit, & Reliquary

Soul Porter

Toshiro the Daimyo w/Command the Graves, & Corpse Bloat

Chiaki the Niece w/Pull of the Grave

Izamu the Armour w/Decaying Aura

Ashigaru

Rotten Belle

And 7 stones in the cache.

 

I opted for Bodyguard on Toshiro and Deliver the Message as my two schemes. I figured that as I would be chasing Suvalas’ master around the table anyway, I may as well grab some extra VP’s from it and Toshiro is so tanky he would be a good bet for Bodyguard.

 

Given the strange deployment my game plan was little more than surround the monument with tanky stuff, chase Suvalas’ master with other stuff, don’t get killed.

 

With this simple message ringing in my ears, we deployed.

 

Suvalas announced he would be taking Von Schill and although I was delighted to be facing a brand new crew (and some sexy new miniatures to boot) I was also very worried, as Von Schill possesses some sneaky movement tricks and is very difficult to lock down. I also noticed that Suvalas was not fielding any other henchmen, meaning I would only be able to score from pickpocketing the man with the mighty moustache.

 

Damn.

 

As the deployment cards were flipped, and pockets of models began to form I saw the opportunity for a slightly better plan. I had four models within striking distance of the monument, one able to attack/claim one of the mysterious effigies, a sixth off in the corner of the board away from all the action and my final model right in the middle of a pack of Suvalas’ models.

 

In return, Suvalas’ crew was quite dispersed, with only a couple of groups of two really presenting any sort of unified threat. I knew I wanted to hold at least one of my good models in reserve to place near to Von Schill so I could start scoring as early as possible. So, I deployed, Yan Lo, Soul Porter, Toshiro and Chiaki as a group of four near the monument, the Ashigaru down near the effigy, the Rotten Belle out on her own ready to lure away any of Suvalas’ big hitters and Izamu in the  middle. As luck would have it Suvalas had no option but to deploy Von Schill very close to Izamu, I was in with a chance.

 

We flipped for initiative and my luck held, I got to go first, I wandered Izamu over to Von Schill, interacted and Boom! Scored my first VP. As it turned out, Suvalas would not win a single initiative flip for the whole game and I was able to rack up a significant lead very early on.

 

The game progressed more or less along the lines of my plan. I lost Chiaki very early thanks in no small part to Vaiuri informing Suvalas that she was my most powerful/useful model and he should make every endeavour to kill her off ASAP. He promptly yelled at her with a Freikorps Librarian and she sauntered off into the next life.

 

Not to be outdone, I was able to Lightning Dance Lazarus away from the Arcane Monument and into combat with Toshiro. Six Soulstone later and Toshiro was still tanking the grenade launching robot at the end of the game. He’d also managed to see off a Strongarm Suit along the way and still finish the game with over half his wounds to score me the maximum VP’s for bodyguard. Something of a trooper is the Daimyo.

 

Elsewhere, my Ashigaru got into a very close run duel with a Freikorps Specialist charging him before he could burn me to a crisp. Both fighters gave as good as they got but the spear outmatched the flammenwerfer (it werfs flammen) on this occasion and thanks to a recently resurrected Chiaki the undead peasant soldier was able to shrug off the burning condition that would have killed him and claim a Mysterious Effigy for me.

 

My Rotten Belle spent most of the game luring the Librarian across the table and out of range of the grand melee occurring around the Arcane Mounment, but came unstuck when she got too close and lost all her printed suits. I won’t be doing THAT again.

 

I managed to accrue a sizable amount to Chi on Yan Lo and was able to not only resurrect the fallen Chiaki but also throw a fair amount of healing at Toshiro. Unfortunately, having used all my stones to keep Toshiro alive and slashing I was powerless to resist the yelled curses from the Friekorps Librarian as she staggered towards my Belle and Yan Lo faded from the game about turn 3.

 

Meanwhile, my Soul Porter had successfully jabbed the Steam Trunk to death with his bladed spear leaving Von Schill without a target he could charge in order to escape the clutches of Izamu. Getting away from the irksome spirit was proving difficult and so Suvalas commited, instead, to killing him. Throughout the game, Izamu had been scoring VP’s for me, either by pickpocketing the Friekorp commander or delivering him a message (a message I assume read ‘look over there while I knick this stuff’). I had also been throwing the occasional attack his way with my Melee expert AP and had managed to knock a sizable chunk of wounds of the aging wrestler, er I mean valiant mercenary.

 

As the game wore on Izamu’s health began to dwindle along with his defence (he had a Defence of 1 at the end) and Von Schill, sensing victory struck a mighty final blow. I explained to Suvalas about A Warrior’s Death and flipped my cards. By this point in the turn, Suvalas had used up his hand so I was able to hit Von Schill quite easily.

 

Then I flipped the Red Joker.

 

I imagined a Karmic Strike like those in the Japanese epic poems, Von Schill plunging his trusty knife into the Izamu’s chest just as the animate armour swings its Dadao into his neck. A glorious and honourable death. In reality what happened was a whooping cheer from me as I killed off Von Schill without even trying to and then fits of giggles as we considered what had happened.

 

As we started turn 5 we took stock of the time and difference in VP’s and called it a night. With a turn still to play the score stood at 6-1 to me, although I had lost my source of VP’s with the death of Von Schill, Suvalas only had Lazarus and the Librarian left in play, both of whom were some distance from the Arcane Monument and locked in combat.

 

Looking back on the game I think I was quite a lot luckier than my opponent. The blind deployment heavily favoured my crew as I understand Von Schill wants to be near his men so as to buff them, whereas I had designed a crew to operate on its own. Also, although I never got any stellar control hands, I always seemed to flip good cards when I needed them, and winning every initiative flip meant I scored at least 1 VP every turn without Suvalas having a chance to stop me.

 

If I were to claim anything about my performance in the game it would be; I think I was bit more careful about my activation order. I knew I wanted to achieve a lot of things in each turn and was took the time to make sure I was stacking the odds in my favour by the way I activated my models. Scoring VP’s first, denying Suvalas’ models movement second and going after stragglers third. If Suvalas had followed suit rather reacting to my moves I think it could have been a very different game.

 

Either way it was a great game and blind Deployment is tremendous and quite scary fun.

 

Photo’s to follow.

 

Cheers,